Pesticides, fertilizers and soil pollution: the environmental impact of tobacco growing

Tobacco cultivation - Rather than promoting crop rotation, which is necessary for preserving soils, the tobacco industry, which cares little about the environmental damage it causes, prefers to devote millions of hectares to the monoculture of tobacco leaves. The lack of rotation in agriculture promotes the depletion of soil nutrients, and therefore the weakening of the tobacco plant, which makes it subject to parasites and the contraction of various diseases.^[1]. Considering this reasoning, the use of chemicals is inevitable, like insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, fumigants, or growth regulators (ripening agents or growth inhibitors). The quantities used are far from anecdotal: Tobacco is the sixth largest agricultural industry consuming pesticides per cultivated area^[2], with 185,000 tonnes of pesticides dumped every year^[3]. While a large proportion of these products are banned in France, 90% of tobacco leaves are grown in developing countries.^[4], whose less protective legislative frameworks allow these practices to continue. The use of chemicals for tobacco cultivation results in soil and groundwater poisoning, but also in direct danger to farmers, who are often unaware of the dangers of such exposure. Finally, the tobacco plant absorbs much more nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium than any other agricultural product, implying the massive use of fertilizers to allow the leaves to develop properly. This practice has the effect of accelerating the impoverishment of soils, which quickly become infertile: the circle is complete. In its articles 17 and 18, the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control emphasizes the need to take environmental imperatives into account and to propose economically viable alternatives to tobacco cultivation. ©Tobacco Free Generation

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^[1] WHO, OMS “Tobacco and its environmental impact: an overview”, 72p report. (in English). https://www.who.int/tobacco/publications/environmental-impact-overview/en/ ^[2] “Potent pesticides nused on tobacco,” CBS News, April 2003. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/potent-pesticides-used-on-tobacco/ ^[3] “Smoking kills… the environment: the environmental impact of tobacco”, E-RSE, May 31, 2016, https://e-rse.net/impact-environnementa-cigarette-tabac-20211/#gs.vpyph9 ^[4] “Tobacco cultivation: socio-economic and environmental impacts”, Stop-Tabac, February 2012, https://www.stop-tabac.ch/fr/la-culture-du-tabac | ©National Committee Against Smoking |